Id go with what MS is recommending. Ive gone both ways (with regards to Exchange 5.5) 
in restoring a known good database and replaying the transaction logs and having to 
recover a corrupted database.  I would just make sure to copy off all the contents of 
your exchsrvr\mdbdata contents somewhere else before trying the restore. Worst case 
then is you can get Exchange back to its current state with a copy of your priv, pub, 
and log files.

Some things to check first though. Go into the advanced tab under the server 
properties in the 5.5 admin program. (Org -> site -> configuration -> server) See if 
you have circular logging turned on or off. Ifs its off your ok with restoring the 
database from tape and replaying the logs. If its on you may lose data by restoring an 
older priv and pub.edb (though it don't sound like it if you have 500+ separate log 
files)

One other thing to check should you decide to go the 'repair what you have' route. 
Shut down all your exchange services on the server. Find the path for the following 3 
files. Dir.edb pub.edb and priv.edb. Open a command prompt on the server and go the 
directory where each of those files are at and use the following command
eseutil /mh priv.mdb > output.txt
Just replace priv.mdb with pub and dir. Open the output.txt file and look about 17 
lines down for the "State:" line. If all 3 say Consistent you don't have to worry 
about the transaction logs. They have been committed to the database. When Exchange 
5.5 information store service is shut down it commits the contents of the logs to the 
database. If the logs are not committed to the database for whatever reason the header 
dump will show the database to be in an Inconsistent state. Short answer is you could 
either move all of the edb*.log files out of your mdbdata directory or do away with 
them manually (definately talk to MS PSS before doing this yourself if your not 
confortable.)

Clyde Burns

-----Original Message-----
From: Salandra, Justin A. [mailto:jasalandra@;chcsnet.org]
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 8:59 AM
To: ActiveDir (E-mail)
Subject: [ActiveDir] OT: Exchange -1018 Error


Hello everyone,

I know this is off topic but you guys and girls always give good advice.

I have been getting event Ids 116, 118 and 200 a lot in my application log.

The chain of events went like this

I installed SP3 for W2K
The next day the Exchange Database went through some type of conversion and
logged Event ID 174 hundreds of times (Table/Column/Index Definintions)
On that same day one of my Hard Drives in my RAID 5 Config failed, I
replaced it 3 days later
Since then every time the online maintenance on the exchange database ran it
logged a Database Page Cache error (Event ID 116 and 118 and 200)
And now ArcServe cannot backup the database fully and commit the logs to the
database so I now have 500 log files in my mdbdata directory.

MS Support wants me to restore from the day the HD failed after I rename the
mdbdata directory and create a new one.  Then they want me to copy in all
the log files and wait for the log files to replay into the database.  The
only other option is to do a eseutil or build a new server and migrate
everyone over.

Have any of you done what MS is recommending?  Do any of you feel that this
is the way to go?  Does anyone know what would of caused these errors, was
it SP3 or was it the HD Failure?

Any help is appreciated


Justin A. Salandra, MCSE
Senior Network Engineer
Catholic Healthcare System
914.681.8117 office
646.483.3325 cell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:jasalandra@;chcsnet.org> 

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